1922 – Born 8
December in Berlin in prosperous Jewish family. He is the son of Ernst Ludwig
Freud, youngest son of the psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud. His father had studied architecture and painted in a style inspired
by the Vienna Secession as a youth. He will be always the favorite son of his mother Lucie Freud, née Brach, daughter of a
cereal trader.

1934 –
Following the coming to power of the Nazis the family decides to move to
England. Lucian is sent with his two brothers to Dartington Hall School in
Devon, eventually changing to Bryanston, a more conservative school in Dorset.
Detests his drawing master and prefers to ride horses instead.

1938 –
Following the Austrian Aunchluss,
Sigmund Freud joins his family in London. A horse sculpture gets Lucian
admitted to the Central Arts and CraftsSchool in London at 15.

1939 –
Sigmund Freud dies of cancer in London. Lucian obtains British nationality.
Meets writers Stephen Spender (1909-95),
Cyril Connolly (1903-74) and Peter Watson (1908-56), editor of Horizon and collector of modern art, who
will publish his drawings in the magazine in the future. Lucian enrolls in the
East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham (until 1942), where he
studies under Cedric Morris (1889-1982).

1940 – Meets
director of the National Gallery, Sir Kenneth
Clark who will visit his studio regularly.

1941 –
Invalided out of Merchant Navy, returns to East Anglian School, which has moved
to Suffolk.

1942 – Meets painter Graham
Sutherland, who admires one of his drawings in Horizon (dead baby of poet Nicholas Moore)and recommends he attend courses at Goldsmith College along
with his friend John Craxton.

1943 – Moves to large studio at Delamere Terrace in Paddington, then a very seedy district
much bombed during the Blitz. Paints Painter’s
Room featuring stuffed zebra given to him by taxidermist Rowland Ward. It
will be sold to Lorna Wishart for £ 50. Illustrates a book of
poems by Nicholas Moore and a fairy tale by Marie Bonaparte, disciple of Freud.

1944 – Gambles and bets in London clubs.

1945 – Introduced to Francis
Bacon by Graham Sutherland. Both frequent the Bohemian milieu of Soho.

1946 – Spends two months in Paris.
Meets Alberto Giacometti and Picasso. Executes his first engravings in London.
Spends summer in Greece on island of Poros with John Craxton.

1947 – Meets Kitty Garman, daughter of sculptor
Jacob Epstein. He has been having an affair with her aunt Lorna Garman. They
will have two daughters Annie and Annabel. Exhibits with Craxton at London
Gallery.

Meets French painter and
set designer Christian Bérard.
Exhibits in “Young Painting in Great Britain”, a show organized

by the British Council in
the Drouin gallery in Paris.

1949 –
Invited by William Coldstream to
teach at the Slade School, London. He is tutor to Michael Andrews (1928-95). Does three portrait drawings of Francis
Bacon, whom he greatly admires for his freedom and spontaneity in painting.

1950 – Abandons
drawing which had occupied much of his time in favor of painting. Exhibits at
the Hanover gallery, London.

1951 – Wins
Arts Council Prize for “Interior in Paddington”. Bacon paints his first
portrait of Freud.

1952 – He is
not yet 30 when the Tate Gallery
buys two of his pictures, “Girl with a White Dog” (Kitty Garman) and

1954 –
Selected with Ben Nicholson to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale.

1955 – Bacon
introduces him to painter Frank Auerbach.
Great impact of first Giacometti
exhibition in London organized

by Arts Council. Frequents
Auerbach, Sutherland, Bacon and also painter Leo Kossoff, all members of the future “London School”.

1958 –
Exhibits at Marlborough Fine art (he
will show there again in 1963 and 1968). Shift into his characteristic
painterly style away from linearity and fine surfaces of early career. Divorces Caroline
in Mexico.Later Freud will have 2 children

1976 – “Human
Clay” exhibition at the Hayward is organized by American expatriate painter Ronald Kitaj who groups together about
50 artists working in London under the label of “The School of London”. Among them are Freud, Bacon, Andrews,
Auerbach, Kossof and Sutherland.

1977 – Freud
moves to Holland Park into a
spacious flat in a bourgeois district. Works as visiting tutor at Slade School
where he meets the painter Celia Paul who will figure in several of his
paintings.

1978 – Spends
a short time in Rome where he meets the painter Balthus, then director of the villa Medici. Admiring at

first, in the end finds
Balthus’ work “too theatrical”.

1980 – Starts
working in new studio in Notting Hill
W11 (until 1998).

1982 – Stars etching again after an interruption of
several decades. This is prompted by the publication of a deluxe edition of a
monograph on him by Lauwrence Gowing with an original engraving in each of the
100 books.

1983 – In new
studio completes one of his most celebrated pictures: “Large Interior W11 (After Watteau)” featuring

Celia Paul, his daughter
Bella Freud, his son Kai next o his mother Suzy Boyt and on the floor a
friend’s daughter, Star.

1984 – Paints
“The Two Irishmen”, a friend, an Ulster trader with his 19-year old son.

1986 – Shares
Golden Lion award at Venice Biennale with Sigmar Polke.

1987 – “The
Artist’s Eye: Lucian Freud” and exhibition at the National Gallery London in
which Freud confronts his work

with that of a selection of
25 works by the Old Masters. A retrospective exhibition at the Hirshorn Museum
in Washington moves to the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Hayward and the Neue
Nationalgalerie, Berlin. These are his first significant international shows.

1988 – “Lucian
Freud, Works on Paper” shown at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and in Edinburgh,
San Francisco, Minneapolis, Cleveland and Saint Louis.

1989 – Death
of his mother, Lucie Freud. Moves to small house in Notting Hill, he will keep,
however, the Holland Park studio until 2008. Takes on the young painter David
Dawson as his assistant.

1990 – Meets
the Australian performance artist Leigh
Bowery. He will pose for Freud for up to 5 days a week over

1992 –
Switches dealers again, now represented by New York dealer William Acquavella. Francis
Bacon dies of heart attack in Madrid.

1993 – Awarded
the Order of Merit. Uses the benefits supervisor and London Underground figure,
Sue Tilley (“Big Sue”)

as a model. Paints his self
portrait in the nude, “Painter Working, Reflection”. “Early Works” exhibition
at the Whitechapel

Art Gallery, London, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Reina Sofia museum, Madrid.

1994 – Death
of Leigh Bowery of AIDS.

1995 – Death
of Michael Andrews.

1999 – Visits
Ingres portrait exhibition at the National Gallery, London over 20 times.

2000 – Freud
begins artistic dialogue with Old Masters, first Chardin’s “Young School
Mistress” at a National Gallery exhibition, Cézanne’s “An Afternoon in Naples”
which he buys, and Constable’s “Tree Trunk”.